When I took over the management of the company, the beginning was very tough, working six days a week, with very long hours. After a while, this started to decrease, but there was still room for improvements, like the hopeless and endless meetings.
Theoretically, I held these meetings to organize important matters and ensure that all the necessary information for decision-making reaches me. However, in reality, I often felt myself bored, therefore I could not focus and lead the meeting properly, so we simply got lost.
The main question was: how could I get the same amount of information and make the same decisions in less time? What exactly is the information I need? Who has it, and in what form could I easily receive it? What can be done in a one-and-a-half-line email, what can be discussed with someone separately in three minutes, and what truly requires discussion in a larger group? And if a discussion is necessary, how can I prevent us from getting sidetracked and distracted?
And once all of this is figured out, how can I ensure that others do it the same way?
We started practicing during our daily 9:30 meeting. Every unit leader attended, bringing questions that either affected multiple areas or were of such significance within their area that they thought I should know about them. Of course, there were also all the grievances, complaints, and contentious issues between areas or among employees.
At first, it wasn't clear to either me or them what I wanted to know and what was important to the others. The meetings went up to an hour and a half, filled with meaningless arguments, red herrings, or unnecessary information. I was not the only one, who found this boring, but the determination and strength needed for change only appeared when we openly discussed this boredom. After that, feedback started flowing freely from and to me, as well as among colleagues, about what needed to be arranged differently elsewhere and what didn't belong there.
It took some time and a few enduring meetings, but the average meeting time went down to half an hour if the team wasn't tired, irritable for some reason, or dealing with a more serious issue. Everyone was easily up to speed with the factory's most important matters. Like a spider, I sat in the middle, and all the necessary information from the previous day was gathered in 30 minutes. Again, I gained not only some time for myself, but since all the area leaders got used to the new way of working, it quickly spread throughout the organization.
And I must admit, online shoe shopping is much better without useless background noise 😀
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